10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The '90s X-Men Cartoon
5. The Writer Didn't Know ANYTHING About X-Men
Eric Lewald was about to work on a new project when he got a phone call saying that as of tomorrow, he was in charge of writing X-Men. The first thing Lewald said was, "That's a Marvel book, right?" At the time, he couldn't name one of the characters to save his life. As a reference, he used an encyclopaedia called Marvel Universe (the '89 version).
But Lewald knew that wasn't enough. He didn't need a book. He needed... a nerd. Or in this case, two nerds. The producer of the show, Larry Houston, and the supervising producer, Will Meugniot, were avid X-Men fans and were responsible for every Easter egg and cameo in the show.
However, since Houston and Meugniot were so obsessed with the comic, they wanted to shove in 40 characters into every episode. Lewald was worried that this would make the story too convoluted and so only filtered in the characters that were necessary for the story.
If Lewald didn't get his knowledge from the producers, the show wouldn't have been faithful to the source material. If the producers took over everything, the show would have been littered with fan-service but have no story. Luckily, the producers and writers created a perfect balance of both.